Hello!

When I was starting with Distorted Reality I too thought that the distorted one is always a bit louder, but that's not the case. Sometime it's actually quieter and this fooled me many time in the beginning.

To my experience the distortion applied is sometimes broadband and sometime more focused in specific frequency. Stages 11 and 12 are increasingly harder so you gotta try to listen each frequency band separately. This will help you hear and discern frequency content added by the distortion so you'll know which one is the distorted one.

Now this one may sound odd, but try to focus on how exactly your ears feel when listening to those two sounds. It's hard to explain, but to me distorted signals always give me the sense as if my blood pressure is high and feel tension in my head. Maybe this is very subjective and I can't really put it into words, but that's just my thoughts. I hope this helps!

This video has good info! The more distorted sound always has an increase in the high frequencies... try to focus on this. Looking for different sounds where there is a larger frequency spectrum helps a lot!

Try to discard louder. That is going to throw you off because there is no consistency in that. Really try to listen to the distortion. I notice that I listen to different elements in the different songs, but always to the same in those particular songs. I often pick out the distortion in the low end (so make sure you have good studio monitors of good headphones), or in the hi hats. I hope this helps.

Thank you all so much! This is all really helpful. Will attempt to figure it out in these ways moving forward!